


transparency

by charcoalsuns



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 20:15:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10521045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charcoalsuns/pseuds/charcoalsuns
Summary: (post-match)





	

**Author's Note:**

> said match has not even begun and yet

 

 

When the match ends, they line up, and Atsumu holds his teeth together like two halves of broken glass.

His smile lifts at the same worn corner: second nature, but seconds too slow. A failure of instinct, carried over from the last set.

Nothing feels real.

"Take down those Tokyo bastards," he manages, tossing the words from his tongue, pride bruised and pricked with blood.

Across the net, Tobio can't tell the difference. He absorbs the vow like a blow, like a benediction – though it's meant as neither – and nods, thin as gauze. He doesn't need it. He doesn't seem to realize when he gives things away.

Then he turns to go, and Atsumu's eyes are left to burn on his back.

Then Atsumu turns to go, and does not look toward the ones on his.

Part of him is still tensed to orchestrate another play. Part of him is collapsing inward, pathetic, before he can tape himself up in composure. His fingers lose traction beneath the stage-bright stadium lights, and with a clean break, their loss finally melts into the present – even as his skin begins to freeze, even as his ears ring in the absence of brass and drumbeats from their stands. He cannot so much as consider smiling any longer. Crowds cheer for the courts beside them, and that, somehow, is worse.

Kita leads them into a bow; his interview voice is out of place here, raised to a shout and directed toward the floor. A hundred instruments clatter as their schoolmates free their hands to applaud.

The thing is, it _was_ a good game. They played well. They drew out strengths they'd never known before, because they were playing against a team they'd never met before, and there are no excuses for the weight pressing against Atsumu's neck in a chokehold. There are no excuses to be found in defeat.

As they leave the stadium for a proper cooldown, he snags his thumb under the collar of his jersey, tugs it up to dry the sweat from his hairline. It means he can't see where he's walking, but some footsteps, at least, are easy to follow. Quiet though they are, steeped in black. He catches the scent of laundry through it all, faint, still fresh with fabricated hope, and wipes across his eyes in covert measure.

His jacket settles around his shoulders like an extra blanket in the dark.

It's a choice that brings Osamu to walk beside him, nothing so inevitable as gravity, even if it is true that Atsumu doesn't need to see him to know he's there.  

He lets his jersey down, straightens it beneath the jacket; puts his arms through the sleeves because it's a bit dumb to run without doing so, and also because he isn't quite feeling the look, at the moment. There are flashes of his name in his periphery, from the stands retreating to the lobby in their wake. The praise passes right through him.

Below the view that lines the upper floor, their buses are lost among a fleet, indistinguishable from everyone else's. Atsumu breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth. No one speaks a word as they follow the wide, deserted curve of the hallway.

Despite the off-kilter fact that they are going home far too soon, his steps strike the floor in a familiar pattern, steady and insistent, one for one with the rhythm at his side.

 

 

 

 

He stops in the aisle so Osamu can take the seat closest to the window, then slides down next to him. It seems the right choice to make.

Aside from their brief team meeting, prelude to the one waiting for them before the afternoon is out, still no one has said a thing, and the lack of conversation, the lack of _reaction_ is starting to get to him. Silence becomes an itch on Atsumu's cheek, asking him to break it and start a chain himself.

But this isn't the silence of boredom, not of sleep or companionship or concentration. These invisible panes between all of their bus seats are not for him to break, not today, so he swallows his words dry and tries to distract himself from the lingering hollow in his chest. He turns to his right, thinking he'll take part for once in staring out at the passing streets.

And for once, Osamu isn't watching the window, though he looks just as unimpressed with what he sees, and just as unobliging in turning away.

Part of Atsumu knows it was no one person's fault. No one pair's fault. Part of him keeps replaying his choices, as if they could possibly have been wrong. The trouble with everything around them choking on silence is that all parts of him clamor at the same volume. Similarly, there's the smallest tinge beneath Osamu's eyelids.

Atsumu presses his teeth together, takes a breath in through the cracks. Under the bus, the road rattles on in an exhale of its own, and on the heels of faint, bloodshot red, he redirects the uncertainty they've carried since that final scythe and whistle decided their tournament's end.

"Five months. We'll make it happen."

It's their vow, after all, not to be passed on like a baton, and not to a different team, at that. Their pride can heal from the hit; years of constant but changeable interest have prepared them to recover from disappointment, even if it was seldom either of their own.

Osamu doesn't so much as nod in answer.

He does blink, though that could merely be a blink, not an intended response, and the set of his shoulders does look a little less like glass itself. One observation at a time, Atsumu continues to find, he might not want for the mind reading he once dreamed of – years are enough to begin knowing a person like a house at night, their corners avoidable with the right sequence of steps, their presence as needed, just where they stood before anyone's attention fell elsewhere.  

When they can understand both dialects of the same language, silence is enough.

So their chain reaction ends now at two, except since it had started long before they learned to speak and longer before they could choose not to, theirs is a conversation that doesn't end, not for good.

Through the window, entire streets of buildings are not yet familiar. Atsumu leans his head back, centered on rough, imitation velvet, and tucks his chin beneath the raised collar of his jacket.

A beat drums onward, far from almost any cause, close to one that can be depended on to keep.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i thought it would be less nervewracking to try to imagine somewhat not-yet-developed characters, because no matter what i'd definitely be at least a little off, but it might have felt even stranger to have this promise of lifted mystery in the near future 
> 
> thank you for reading!


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